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Why a town librarian has spent 102 days standing in front of Ferguson’s police department

Angelique Kidd, 41, of Ferguson, is among most dedicated of protesters awaiting the verdict in the killing of black teen Michael Brown. The mother of two has been on the streets opposite the Ferguson Police Department nearly daily for the past 102 days, demanding change. (Mitch Potter / Toronto Star) | Order this photo

FERGUSON, MO.—She’s a mom, a librarian, a U.S. army vet, just like her dad. She belongs to a Ferguson book club that hasn’t met since police bullets felled Michael Brown in August.

Her 9-year-old daughter’s on the Ferguson swim team. Her husband, who builds in-ground pools for a living, is president of their neighbourhood community association. Together, they launched two local community gardens. This is home. They’re dug in, here for the long haul.

With a bio like that, Angelique Kidd, 41, admits she’s just about the last person you might expect to find on the picket line, standing vigil day in and day out for the past 102 days opposite the Ferguson Police Department, demanding change.

“I’ve never protested anything in my life until now,” Kidd said Tuesday afternoon, huddled alongside the handful of hardcore activists who’ve become good friends through months of heat, rain, and now sub-zero cold.

“It all started for me a few days after the shooting of Michael Brown, when our police chief was going to tell us who the shooter was. When he refused to say the name, something just came over me. I went outside with a can of (water-soluble) paint and wrote, ‘Who shot Mike Brown’ in big letters all over my vehicle.”

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Less than 10 minutes later, Kidd said, seven police cars — six from the Ferguson force, one from nearby Calverton Park — were in front of her house. She became terrified, ran inside, locked her doors and windows, and called her husband.

“They took down my licence plate and went away. And after I stopped being scared I started getting angry. And so I joined the march. I put signs on our lawn. And I’ve been down here opposite the police station almost every day since then.”

Kidd admits she’s lost friendships over her activism — although she won’t know how many until Ferguson falls out of the headlines and things return to some semblance of normal. She’s knows of at least two (unsuccessful) attempts to dislodge her from her part-time job at Ferguson Public Library.

And she is saddened that her home town has acquired a global reputation for hatred and strife when her reality suggests otherwise.

“The issue is not racial conflict between the residents of Ferguson. The issue is police accountability,” she says. “It’s important that the world understand that.”

Still, Kidd admits her eyes have been opened by some of the reactions she has encountered with standing vigil with placards. More than a few white motorists have “flipped me the bird.” One raised middle finger came from a passing Ferguson police cruiser. Other Ferguson cops, however, have actually acknowledged protesters with friendly waves, she says.

Kidd and the rest of the local core of protesters have seen larger waves of protesters come and go. Tuesday, they were joined by a student who had driven 15 hours from Delaware to be at their side. Another, a history student from North Carolina, came by air.

“I’ve come to understand that an event like this is a magnet for people with all kinds of axes to grind. My view is that’s fine as long as they are non-violent. That’s a line we won’t cross. Sometimes my daughter joins me. I want to be heard, not hurt.”

Kidd takes a dim view of the “I Love Ferguson” campaign that was launched in October in a bid to mend reputational damage. The signs now adorn nearly half of the city of 21,000 people’s lawns, with a bright red heart between the words “I” and “Ferguson.”

“It’s fine to say you love your town. I do, too. But do you really need to hide behind a banner and pretend that everything is fine when a huge number of our population are not happy at all with where we are right now?

“We all need to heal. But it’s too soon. We don’t even have a grand jury decision yet. And until we do, my way of saying ‘I love Ferguson’ is to stand right here in front of the police station.”

Those last words earn nods and smiles from the small group she’s with. “You still yapping? At least you had something to say,” says one, laughing.

Rick Canamore, 50, who lives in the nearby suburb of Normandy but does all of his shopping in Ferguson, is another long-termer on this line. His only previous experience with demonstrations was a march in St. Louis for Trayvon Martin, the Florida teen gunned down in 2012.

Now, apart from church and his work at a nearby pharmaceutical plant, this stretch of pavement has taken over Canamore’s life.

“We dealt with the heat, we dealt with rain, and now, three months later, the cold and the snow. But this is too important to let go. We’ve got to change the police culture into a culture of training and accountability. No matter what the grand jury decides, we need real change.”

Whether it will come in the ruling everyone awaits is a trickier question. The Missouri governor’s pre-emptive declaration of a state of emergency, together with the activation of Missouri National Guard troops, suggests to many that there will be no indictment against Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson, who fired six bullets into the unarmed Brown in a confrontation rife with conflicting eyewitness statements.

“I can’t say if I’m optimistic or depressed as the grand jury ruling approaches,” says Kidd. “I’m just numb with exhaustion, more than anything.”

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